the ways in which state apparatuses developed during Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty became instrumentalized to “fight crime.”
From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post Civil Rights America by Patrisia Macías-Rojas
From Deportation to Prison focuses on how the wider rise of mass incarceration led to the increasing criminalization of immigrants through the Criminal Alien Program. This book is a timely and necessary read that highlights the brutality of the for-profit system of immigration detention (one shocking revelation is that the government mandates 30,000 beds in immigrant detention centers must always be occupied).
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow was first published in 2010 but is still as timely as ever. Legal scholar Michelle Alexander shows the ways in which policies like crack/cocaine sentencing disparities, over-policing, and mandatory minimums resulted in a disproportionate number of African American men being incarcerated, a phenomenon she christened “The New Jim Crow.” Alexander’s book makes an important argument, but also fundamentally changed the way we talk about mass incarceration and policing in America.
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
This Pulitzer-prize winning book tells the story of the Attica prison uprising and the subsequent legal battles in exhaustive detail. Heather Ann Thompson spent a decade writing this book, gaining access to never before used sources and interviewing the people involved in the uprising.
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My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South by Issac Bailey
Isaac Bailey was just nine-years-old when his brother was imprisoned for life. His book is a raw exploration of his relationship to his
